The story of Mitchelville, South Carolina – The First Settlement for Freedmen in America – is an emotional one with tremendous potential to touch people all over the world. Sadly, the raw emotion of the end of slavery and the people who fought so valiantly for their freedom was in danger of getting hidden in the shadows of the story’s vast number of historical facts and figures. For example, historians believe that a significant number of African Americans can trace their family roots to this tiny settlement on Hilton Head Island. Our challenge was to rebrand the Mitchelville Preservation Project in an effort to tell the Freedmen’s powerful story in a way that will engage a national audience and encourage the national-level interest and fundraising necessary to ensure that this living American history lesson will not die.